Enterprise Abstraction

Dealing with large sets of data

theinfo.org is a nascent wiki resource for members of the library community dealing with large data sets, and related visualization, tools, algorithms.

- via oss4lib - Aaron Swartz.

CISTI Lab

Many months back we'd started CISTI Lab, a website for CISTI developers to expose some beta applications and to illustrate some of the more experimental work that's not yet ready for prime time, but that could use some exposure and a few more eyes.

The Lab has recently been revamped, and now includes some of the work being done by the CISTI Research group, as well as a wiki that explains some of the work.  As time goes on we hope to be adding some new additions, hopefully including some SOA-based architecture and related services, tools and applications.  For one, I'm hoping to revamp or replace the CISTI Toolbar application I wrote with something a bit better... most likely LibX based.

From the CISTI Lab site:

CISTI Lab visitors and collaborators will be able to test and evaluate Web-based experimental applications for science libraries. It is a place for CISTI to demonstrate prototypes, collaborate with researchers within NRC as well as Universities, libraries and the private sector and to obtain feedback from early adopters.

CISTI Lab has at its disposal a significant collection of electronic documents and meta-data about these documents as well as a collection of software tools and APIs for building Web applications and Web Services.

From an architecture perspective, it's a place that we hope we can use to help prove architecture and technology concepts, expose some experimental web services, and to encourage innovation in the area of libraries and technology.  More generally, CISTI is hoping to encourage collaboration and interest from like minded individuals and organizations.

Planet Library SOA

Peter Murray (aka "The Jester") has been kind enough to setup a new library SOA aggregation at Planet Library SOA.  So, you  growing masses of library architecture enthusiasts, please feel free to converge there and slurp from the fountain of library SOAness.  (Note that library in this context means that place with books and journals and stuff).

RSS in Plain English

Darren Barefoot posted about this nifty video RSS in Plain English by Common Craft. 

There are two types of Internet users, those that use RSS and those that don't. This video is for the people who could save time using RSS, but don't know where to start.
I love the explanation, as well as the format of the presentation.  Probably not news for most of you, but a useful link when you're trying to explain RSS to people.  The web's not about web pages anymore.

At my organization we'd always talked about producing new technologies at the pace of "web time".  Perhaps we should be striving to get our information out in "blog time" instead?  Visiting web pages one at a time seems so old fashioned and slow these days.  It's amazing how perceptions change.

Small pieces

Roderic Page of iPhylo mentioned the book Small Pieces Loosely Joined.  It could be an interesting, I think I'll add it to my reading list.  In his review he mirrors some of my thoughts regarding the differences in the web world of information where quantity seems to outweigh quality concerns with regard to data:

The more I read it the more it confirms my fear that most people talking about biological taxonomy and biodiversity on the Web simply don't "get" the Web. Adopting the Web successfully will require a willingness to accept error, ambiguity, and downplaying "expertise" and "authority".

We often have similar concerns in the library field where traditionally cataloguers pride themselves on the unyielding accuracy of their library catalogues, whereas in the web world data accuracy isn't usually the most important issue.  The most important thing is having just enough information to be able to successfully search and connect the information.  Hence, much to the chagrin of most cataloguing professionals, Dublin core and other simplified bibliographic metadata standards have become exceedingly common on the web.